Night Wings Read online

  Night Wings

  Joseph Bruchac

  Illustrations by

  Sally Wern Comport

  For my grandchildren,

  Carolyn Rose and Jacob Bowman.

  May our stories always give you strength.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Family Tradition

  2. Making It Through

  3. Storm Coming

  4. Dreams

  5. Captain Hook

  6. Pmola’s Treasure

  7. Stuck

  8. Got Him

  9. Looking

  10. Stay Put

  11. No Sounds

  12. The Catch

  13. The Bucket

  14. Drowning

  15. Old Stories

  16. Things Could Get Worse

  17. A Fall

  18. Off the Trail

  19. One Big Bird

  20. Distant Rumble

  21. Fabled Monsters

  22. In the Night

  23. The Edge

  24. Back

  25. Trip

  26. No Funny Stuff

  27. Onward and Upward

  28. Mist

  29. The Cave

  30. The Light

  31. Surviving the Hardships

  About the Author

  Other Books by Joseph Bruchac

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  It would not have been possible for me

  to write this story (and many others)

  without the generous guidance I was given

  over the years by Abenaki elders and

  tradition bearers Maurice Dennis/Mdawelasis

  and Stephen Laurent/Atian Lolo.

  Their gifts of story will not be forgotten.

  Their feet are now on the road of stars,

  but their voices will always be with us.

  Prologue

  It’s quiet outside. Too quiet. No crickets, no scrabble of shrews and mice in the grass, not even an owl calling. This kind of quiet is ominous. But I want to believe it might be safe. That I might survive the night.

  Here inside this cave there are sounds. There’s the drip of water from the ceiling, where ancient water from some spring within the heart of the mountain has seeped through. Bat wings flutter softly in the deeper darkness behind me.

  I think I hear something out there. It’s a faint sound like the flap of wind against canvas. It’s the sound of wings, of something in flight that shouldn’t be real. Something that should just be a fantasy.

  But fantasies don’t have claws. I force myself not to reach and feel the place where my jacket was torn on my left shoulder. It aches there, but touching it will make it worse.

  I look outside. Maybe I just imagined that sound. It’s nearly midnight, two hours since I took refuge in this narrow cave. I can see the wide expanse of sky in front of me, the shapes of other slopes against the horizon. No lights, though, aside from the stars.

  Suddenly something drops down with a whomp of wings that blot out the stars. Two red eyes stare at me from the inhuman face of the one who guards this place. The one who will not rest until it has me in its fierce grasp.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Family Tradition

  I’ve always loved watching birds, the way they spread their wide wings, going up and up until they are out of sight. I’ve always thought about what it would be like to fly with a flock of geese or catch a thermal and soar next to a golden eagle. I can’t imagine anything that would be cooler than that. I feel—or at least I used to feel—so close to those wide-winged fliers.

  I also sort of look like a big bird. I have a narrow face, big eyes, and one of those classic northeastern-Indian noses. A beak. Plus my hair, which I keep in a sort of combination brush cut and Mohawk, rises up like a heron’s crest. I’m so tall and thin that I towered over everybody else at West End Junior High. And although my legs are skinny, they have a lot of spring in them. I was the best high jumper there. My track coach, Mr. Dunkle, told me that when I went over the bar, it looked as if I was in flight. I liked that.

  Poor Mr. Dunkle, who was also the basketball coach, looked like he was about to cry when I told him I was leaving at the end of last school year. Despite the fact that I had already told him I wasn’t interested in playing, he’d been hoping to convince me to try out for the basketball team. He saw me as his new star center. Ha! As if someone who trips over his own feet when he tries to run and bounce a basketball at the same time could ever take to the court with any success. When it comes to team sports, I’m about as graceful and coordinated as a crippled duck. The reason I do so well at high jump is that it’s just me out there. Plus it ends with falling on your back. That is something I know I’m good at. Coach Dunkle said that I wasn’t really clumsy, that I was just getting used to my size and that I was self-conscious. But there was still no way that I was going to pick up b-ball.

  “Honey,” a voice calls from the next room of the trailer.

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “Are you sure you are going to be all right here with your grampa?” Her voice is anxious.

  I look around the little room that is going to be mine for at least the next school year. If I liked living in a closet, I think, I’d be happy as a bug in a rug. But I don’t say that. How can you be sarcastic when your mom is being deployed to a war zone in the Middle East?

  “Yeah,” I say, raising my voice to a high-pitched, childish tone. “I’ll be peachy keen!”

  Mission accomplished. It makes her laugh. But it’s a brief laugh. “Are you absolutely sure?” she asks. She pokes her head in through the doorway to look down at me, sitting on my bed, which is so low to the ground that my knees are around my shoulders. “Can you be honest, Pauley?”

  I raise my hands and hold them out so that they almost touch the two walls on either side. I not only raise my voice, I make it shaky to the point of panic.

  “Considering my severe claustrophobia, how could I not be happy here?”

  This time Mom laughs so hard she has to sit down on the bed next to me. She leans her head on my bony shoulder and hugs me. She’s still laughing some, but her eyes are glistening and I know she’s having a tough time keeping back the tears.

  “Pauley,” she whispers, “you are so much like your father.” She gives me one more squeeze, stopping just short of cracking my ribs. Mom is strong, almost scarily so. I guess it’s because her people are Bear clan, descended from real bears—at least according to one of our tribe’s stories! Dad’s people are Fortunes—Water people—which doesn’t explain why both he and I are built like anorexic basketball players.

  “Will he be there when you get off the plane?” I ask.

  Dad was deployed a year ago. We talk to him a lot over the phone and even see him sometimes—but only on our computer screen in shaky videos when he is allowed to send them.

  “He better be,” she replies.

  There’s a real smile on her face this time. Her unit is going to be at the same base as his, and they’ll be able to spend a lot of time together. According to Dad, what they have most over there is free time and boredom—punctuated by moments of absolute chaos and screaming terror.

  “Just think,” she says, and I know what she’s about to say because it’s an old worn-out joke in our family, one I have even heard Grampa Peter crack, “both of your parents are going to be ‘soldiers of fortune.’”

  I laugh because I am supposed to laugh. Sure, I’m glad they will be together. I am also scared to death that I’ll never see either of them again in the flesh.

  “I wish I could go with you,” I say.

  Mom punches me in the arm. “No, you don’t,” she says. “And there is no way your father and I are ever goi
ng to give you permission to enlist before you turn eighteen. If I have my way, you’re going to college first. You have your own wars to fight here.”

  Just four or five more years, I think. I’m thirteen now. And there’s a long tradition of military service on both sides of our family. Grampa Peter’s war was Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Great-grampa Sam and Great-grampa Nicol both died on Iwo Jima. And it goes back like that all the way to the American Revolution, where no less than a dozen of my ancestors served on the side of the colonies after our people swore they would no longer fight against this country. They and their descendants would be connected to the defense of America as tightly as the links of an iron chain. I’m not going to be the one to break that chain.

  Someone claps his hands together lightly outside the door. It’s Grampa Peter using the old, polite way of announcing his presence.

  “Okay, Tongwes,” Mom says, using the old Abenaki word for “Father” as she always does when she speaks to him. Even though Grampa Peter is my dad’s father, it’s her way of showing him respect. “I’m ready.”

  I sense rather than hear Grampa Peter going back into the living room, where Mom has her bags. Grampa can pretty much make himself undetectable, which is why he did so well as a scout in Vietnam. But I can almost always sense when he’s near, even when he’s creeping up from behind in the stalking game he’s played with me ever since I was two years old.

  Grampa Peter is also what you’d call—if you were into understatement—a man of few words. He seldom utters more than two or three at a time. But he can say more with a gesture or an expression on his face than most people can in a ten-minute speech. Like when he raises an eyebrow. That is his way of gently suggesting that you need to rethink whatever you just said or did because you’ve got it wrong.

  Mom stands up and straightens her uniform coat. We’re driving her to the bus that she and the others in her Guard company will be taking to Boston, where they’ll fly out from Logan Airport. So our good-byes are going to be sooner rather than later. Not that we say good-bye. What we say is olipamkaani. Good travels.

  Mom turns around and hugs me again. She holds on for a long time and I let her. I don’t want her to go, but I would never say that. Finally, though, I pretend to take a strangled breath.

  “Lungs crushed,” I croak. “Need to breathe.”

  Mom laughs. Even though I know she is doing it because she knows I want to make her laugh, I laugh with her. Then she goes out the door and I follow. There’s nothing more I can tell her now. I have to let her focus on going, and on taking care of herself while she is gone.

  So I don’t say a word to her about the dream I had last night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Making It Through

  Grampa Peter and I don’t wave as Mom steps onto the bus. We just walk to the truck without looking back over our shoulders. It’s an old tradition in our family that whenever someone has to go off to war, you don’t make a big deal about it. No weeping or carrying on like the little boy back at the curb, whose volume is going up so high that he’s splitting our eardrums.

  “I don’t want Daddy to go, Mommy. No! Noooo! I don’t want him to go! I want my daddy!”

  To be honest, there’s a part of me that wants to do just what he’s doing. But that won’t change anything. There’s nothing I can do to stop my mom from going away. I can only try to make that parting easier for her. Our elders always say that when a man—or a woman these days—leaves to defend the people, his or her mind must be focused on the task ahead. If your loved ones are trying to pull you back with theatrics and pleading words, it may make you feel guilty about leaving them. Feeling guilty about leaving your family can make you lose focus, and that’s the worst way to be when you are going into danger. When your life is threatened, you’ve got to stay calm and keep a clear head.

  That’s how Grampa Peter made it through Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. When other men were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, he kept his gun locked and loaded and made sure his company kept their perimeter secured. And the calm image of his family he carried in his head kept him cool.

  “Weren’t you scared when they were coming through the wire in the darkness?” I asked him once.

  “Sure,” he said. “Them, too.”

  And even though that was all he had to say about it, it was enough for me.

  Just as we get to the truck, Grampa Peter puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Piel.”

  He has only said my name in Abenaki, but I understand. He’s telling me that it’s okay to watch the bus pull away. I can make it through this.

  I turn around. I no longer hear the kid who is crying, and I hardly see the rest of the people gathered down there. All I see is the rear window of the bus and Mom looking out of it.

  My eyesight is better than most. I can pick out things clearly at a distance when others just see a blur. Hawk eyes, Dad calls it, like a bird of prey seeing a mouse from way up in the sky. Mom has her hand raised, palm toward me. I raise mine back at her and I read her lips as she mouths three words: I love you.

  I love you, too, Mom, I say silently, just before the bus takes a right turn onto Elm Street and she’s gone.

  Grampa Peter and I stand there. We probably look like two statues—one a tall, straight old man with a brown face and long white hair, and the other a gawky, long-limbed teenager.

  Then Grampa moves his eyes upward, toward the peaks that tower over the town. I follow his gaze to the clouds that are starting to gather up there like flocks of sheep.

  “Storm coming,” he says.

  Those words send a chill down my back.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Storm Coming

  As soon as we get back, Grampa Peter and I shut the windows of the trailer, latch the door of the shed, cover up the young tomato plants, make sure the plastic over the woodpile is secure, and retie the tarps over our four-wheelers. It’s a good thing we’re moving fast. The wind hits the trailer just as I shut the last window.

  Whap. It’s as if a giant has swatted an immense hand against us. The thirty-foot trailer shudders like a nervous horse. Then the rain and hail hit hard against the aluminum roof and walls, creating a deafening roar.

  I always like storms like this, but I like them even more when I’m outside. I’ve been coming to Grampa’s trailer in New Hampshire for years and I’ve gotten to know all the best sheltering places on Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson, the mountains that rise above it. It’s really amazing to be under a rock ledge or in the mouth of a cave in the heart of a storm.

  Of course not everyone feels that way. To some it is just plain terrifying. Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast, is one of the most dangerous mountains in the world. Wind lives up there. That wind was once clocked at 233 miles per hour, the highest surface wind ever recorded. And Mount Washington is also often the coldest place in the lower forty-eight states. At its worst, figuring in wind chill, it can be just as cold on the summit as the deadliest winters in Antarctica. Every season hikers get lost up there; some die. Even the eight-mile-long road that winds 6,288 feet up the east side to the summit can be deadly. Cars get blown off of it in late summer, and it is closed to tourists in the winter.

  You have to respect the mountain. It’s not just a pile of rocks. It’s alive, and there are times when it can really hurt you. The name Mount Washington makes it seem friendly, as familiar as the first president of the United States. People think of the mountain as being tamed. After all, there’s an observatory on the top, ski runs on its slopes, and an old cog railway running along one side. There even used to be a hotel up there.

  But my family remembers what our old people called it: Agiocochook. Some have translated that as “Home of the Great Spirit,” and others have said it means the place where the storm wind blows. But neither is exactly right. The true meaning, “Where the Wind Spirit Is Alive,” is far more ominous.

  No
one knows more about this part of our land than Grampa Peter. Sure, a geologist can speak about the formation of these mountains and valleys, a meteorologist can explain why the climate at the summit is so forbidding, and perhaps a historian could do a more scholarly job of talking about the European history of this place they now call New Hampshire that is still part of Ndakinna—Our Land—to us. But they don’t know it from the heart and spirit the way he does.

  What my Grampa knows is both as old as the wind and as present as the breath in our lungs. He knows how to talk to the mountains and has not forgotten how to listen to them. One big reason that he was such a popular wilderness guide before he retired was that no one ever got lost or hurt when he took them into the peaks. Hiking, rock climbing, cross-country skiing, canoeing. He did it all. He worked with scout groups and grown-ups and, believe it or not, he was a great storyteller.

  “Scouts wear you out,” he said once. Then he chuckled because he knew that I knew he was just joking. He really liked those kids, and they worshipped him. They thought he knew everything about the mountains. They weren’t wrong.

  I turn now to look out the window and I can no longer see anything other than a solid wash of water streaming down the glass. Behind me, Grampa Peter is getting the casserole ready to put into the oven. He’s a good cook—as long as a meal involves bacon and anything that comes in a can. Baked beans are his specialty.

  Good thing I like beans. I’ll be eating them a lot until I learn to cook some of the recipes that Mom has left with me, all printed out neatly in green ink on color-coded five-by-seven-inch cards. Red cards are main dishes, yellow cards are sides, and white cards are desserts. Mom is nothing if not organized.